


i'll love you 'til my breathing stops

by acnasa



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:19:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11669931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acnasa/pseuds/acnasa
Summary: tyler eats sandwiches, talks to inanimate objects, and writes.josh goes to work and doesn't talk.this is fine.





	i'll love you 'til my breathing stops

**Author's Note:**

> title: writer in the dark, by lorde
> 
> i don't know what this is, but the song inspired me. go listen to melodrama. it's a good album. 
> 
> also, i have something big planned. look out for that.

josh leaves.

tyler hears the front door shut at 7:30 each morning and reopen at 8:00 each night. josh sets down his bags, walks into the closet, undresses, then climbs in bed. tyler's always under the covers.

josh says, "goodnight," and falls asleep. sometimes tyler sleeps. sometimes he doesn't.

in the mornings, josh rolls out of bed, takes a shower, grabs his bags from where he left them, and leaves. tyler wakes up at 7:30 every day when the front door closes.

during the day, he writes. he talks to the chandeliers and expensive furniture. he eats sandwiches made of fancy bread and lettuce grown somewhere in europe. then he writes more.

josh comes home, and he pretends to sleep. josh leaves, and he talks to the house and writes.

 

::

 

"this is josh," tyler's mom says.

"he's going to be staying with us," tyler's dad says.

josh has brown curly hair, a lip piercing, and a nose ring. and gauges.

"his family situation isn't the best," tyler's mom explains. josh turns red at this.

"he's sharing your room," tyler's dad tells him. "we'll get around to buying a new bed, but we might need another expansion."

tyler leads josh to his room, and that's the first night they sleep in the same bed.

 

::

 

"i want to be you," tyler tells the plastic tree in the second-floor office. "it would be so easy. like, you don't have to worry about love or dead parents or anything. just looking nice." he taps the leaves and listens to the kids at the estate next door argue about who gets to jump in the pool first. there's a shriek, a splash, and then angry yelling.

"i want to be you, too," he adds, looking at the picture frame above his head. it's from a time before josh, but the picture inside is of the two of them at the beach. "all you have to worry about is getting dusty and being put in the attic."

he stands up and walks into the kitchen, eats a sandwich that would cost nearly twenty dollars in a store, then sits in his closet under the back staircase, where his family lives.

he writes about laundry baskets.

 

::

 

tyler was about to go to college when his mother was overtaken by cancer.

josh held his hand when he cried at the funeral. that's when the first spark blazed, when tyler didn't have to worry about going to church or badmouthing gay people.

halfway through the service, he started crying out of relief. zack had finals, jay was just a kid, and maddie was about to enter middle school. josh had a job. his parents were dead. he might be gay.

when they got home, he grabbed his father's laptop and wrote a story about lamps.

 

::

 

instead of saying goodnight, josh says, "what do you do when i'm gone?"

tyler rolls onto his back. josh is standing next to the bed. he has bags under his eyes and his yellow hair is flat.

"i write, i talk to the house, i eat sandwiches, and i write more."

josh frowns.

 

::

 

"oh, you have the easiest job," tyler tells the door to the closet under the back stairs. "you just open and shut for me. all you do is let me in, then push me out. easy."

the door says nothing. a picture of madi after her first surgery is taped to the top panel, and she flutters with a nonexistent breeze.

"go away," tyler says to the ghost in the closet. "i'm trying to write. go away."

the ghost slaps him in the face, screams, "i don't love you!" and disappears.

tyler writes about bookcases.

 

::

 

josh comes home two hours early, with his hair dyed back to a strange yellow-brown. he has a box in his arms that he dumps on the table. tyler hides in the closet while josh walks around the house, calling for him.

his parents tell him to go out there. the ghost scratches his arms and holds him back.

at eight, he creeps out, slips under the covers in their bedroom, and pretends to be asleep. josh walks in, gets undressed, says goodnight, and goes to sleep.

 

::

 

they never got around to buying another bed. or expanding the house.

tyler's father died from a heart attack when he was sixteen. madi died from plastic surgery complications when he was twenty-nine. jay disappeared to somewhere on the west coast. zack... nobody knows where zack is. tyler stayed in the house with josh, wrote on his dad's computer, ate whatever he grabbed first from the pantry until josh told him to start going to the gym.

the first time tyler talks after his mother's death is a month afterwards. he's laying on the couch, gnawing on a lollipop while josh watches some obscure soap opera on tv.

"i love you," he says. it comes out more like a question. josh doesn't even blink. he just changes the channel to an animal show and says, "i don't."

tyler nods. his teeth crunch down on the lollipop and he ends up with a mouth full of red shards.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the abrupt end, but my phone decided to delete half of the story. 
> 
> uh... feedback?


End file.
